Every year at this time, the Missouri Botanical Gardens, in St. Louis puts together an Orchid display unlike you will see anywhere else in the United States.  I’ve been lucky enough each year to have the opportunity to shoot the exhibit before it opens to share the images as a way of encouraging people to visit the show.  Each year the exhibit fills a large room with nearly every type of Orchid you could think of.  The end product is an immersive experience that will delight your senses.

The title of this years show is “Orchid Mania” and the name fits.  Everywhere you look is a new, different type of orchid.    Each year the wonderful people at the Missouri Botanical Gardens give me early access to shoot the exhibit by myself. It’s the photographic equivalent of being a kid in a candy store.

After shooting it for a few years, I realized this year I only needed two lenses, both by Lensbaby.  I completed the entire shoot using the Lensbaby Velvet56 and Velver85.

They were all I needed.

If you are not familiar with Lensbaby lenses, you get acquainted with them.  They are quite simply the best manual focus art lens on the market.  Their optics are crisp and pure and the bokeh is wonderfully smooth.   I have shot Infrared for years with Lensbaby lenses, and now we even carry them on our website

For this shoot, I used a Canon 7DMKII converted to Super Color and a Canon 5DMKIV.  Everything was shot with natural light as the ceiling is one big skylight.  I White Balanced the IR camera with foliage in the room and shot a gray card for the color camera.

In total I had about two hours to shoot the exhibit and could have easily spent another two hours and not been bored.

So, if you are in the St. Louis area, the Missouri Botanical Gardens Orchid show is on now thru March 25th.

To see more images from this shoot, you can visit the Riverfront Times here or check out the entire series on my website here